by Nick Gisburne
She knows that no one else will ever come.
In darkness she will slowly starve, alone,
A prisoner, her body broken, numb,
Inside the only room she’s ever known.
She cannot speak her sorrow, tell her truth.
He never taught her, never said a word.
She knows her name, not how, nor why, but Ruth
Will never see the sun, or watch a bird.
Her world: a bleak existence; this, no more.
The days (or were they nights?), and someone. Him.
He threw her, always, flinching, to the floor,
And, in his stink, his squalor, made her swim.
She knew that when she killed him she would die,
But in her dreams, at last, she sees the sky.
